Very interesting concepts Emir.
Btw nice and very broad book on this kind of visualization conceptsis also covered in Frank Gambale´s Technique book which is despite the name a book for visualizing scales and not a book ovcer technique...

Very interesting concepts Emir.Btw nice and very broad book on this kind of visualization conceptsis also covered in Frank Gambale´s Technique book which is despite the name a book for visualizing scales and not a book ovcer technique...

I didn't know about that book but I will check it out. Thank you for the comment

Here is an example of how you can use many different minor/major pentatonic scales in an interesting way over a various chord progressions. I learned this great approach from my teacher Shaun Baxter when I was a student at "Guitar Institute" in London.

This approach is called 'up a 5th principle'. To understand how this works let's look at this example.

If we take a Cmaj7 chord we can play the Lydian scale. The C major pentatonic is part of C Lydian scale which means that we can safely improvise using C major pentatonic over Cmaj7 chord. This pentatonic scale leaves out two notes of Lydian scale (maj 7th and the #4th). This #4 is the strongest note within the Lydian mode.

- C Lydian = 1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6, 7 or C, D, E, F#, G, A, B

- C major pentatonic = 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 or C, D, E, G, A

In order to bring the 'missing' notes back into play (F# and B) we can use the 'up a 5th' pentatonic scale, and again another 'up a 5th' pentatonic scale counting from the previous one. That would be G major pentatonic and the D major pentatonic.

The same principle works over minor pentatonic. If we take Cm7 chord, we can use C dorian scale.

- C Dorian = 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, b7 or C, D, Eb, F, G, A, Bb

The C minor pentatonic exists within C Dorian

- C minor pentatonic = 1, b3, 4, 5, b7 or C, Eb, F, G, Bb

This pentatonic scale leaves out two notes of Dorian (2nd and 6th or D and A). Of these the 6th is the strongest sounding note. We can again use 'up a 5th' minor pentatonic scales (which exist within C dorian) to bring back the missing notes. Here they are:

This piece of music has all minor, major and dominant chords so the possible pentatonic options are written in the table below. Notice that the first time over G13 chord I play D major pentatonic. That one is 'three fifths up from the starting point'. It also works as G13 chord is as extended as it can be (9, 11, 13) and this scale produces (F# or maj7) against the chord which still sounds acceptable as it is the part of a strong unit (Dmaj pent).